Why passion is the ultimate driver in entrepreneurship and economic development

Entrepreneurship is really about doing what you are passionate about, then finding others to help you by doing what they are passionate about. Working alone in the garage to build a business is just a myth, it never happens. Even Steve had Woz, and virtually every successful business ever built has been a group effort. Businesses and people thrive when each individual is able to focus on what they love and do best. Instead of becoming the typical “superhero entrepreneur” by doing everything on their own.

In this episode, I am speaking with Ernesto Sirolli. For 35 years he has helped communities and organizations grow entrepreneurs through what he calls “Enterprise Facilitation” and Social Infrastructures. He has worked all over the world and they have helped start over 50 thousand businesses. Listen in to this insightful conversation.

Some of the things we discuss

What the word entrepreneur really means.

The psychology of entrepreneurship.

Why you should only work at the things you are passionate about.

Where communities can find new entrepreneurs.

Rebuilding our social infrastructures to help each other become the fullest human they can be.

Ernesto Sirolli is a noted authority in the field of sustainable economic development and is the Founder of the Sirolli Institute, an international non-profit organization that teaches community leaders how to establish and maintain Enterprise Facilitation projects in their community. The Institute is now training communities in the USA, Canada, Australia, UK, Africa, Asia, Central and Latin America. In 1985, he pioneered in Esperance, a small rural community in Western Australia, a unique economic development approach based on harnessing the passion, determination, intelligence, and resourcefulness of the local people. The striking results of “The Esperance Experience” have prompted more than 250 communities around the world to adopt responsive, person-centered approaches to local economic development similar to the Enterprise Facilitation® model pioneered in Esperance.

How self-awareness can lead to a better business and a more fulfilling life

We all know, that to be a smart entrepreneur or leader of our community, we need strong self-awareness so that we can understand people and their motivations. Yet often, we operate from the mistaken assumption that we understand our own motivations.

In this episode, my guest, organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich talks about how research shows that we are not as self-aware as we think we are. We also talk about how developing this skill can help us be more successful, build stronger relationships and can help us build better and more meaningful businesses and lives.

Some of the points we touch on

Defining Self-awareness

Why we often overestimate our awareness

Why journaling and introspection might not be helping

The seven pillars of insight

How to look at yourself from different points of view

and much more.

We also talked about a simple quiz that can help you understand your current state of self-awareness. Here is the link to the quiz. Insight quiz

About Insight

“Most people feel like they know themselves pretty well. But what if you could know yourself just a little bit better—and with this small improvement, get a big payoff…not just in your career, but in your life?

Research shows that self-awareness is the meta-skill of the 21st century—self-aware people are more successful, more confident, build better relationships, and are more respected and effective leaders. There’s just one problem: most people don’t see themselves quite as clearly as they could, and it’s rare to get candid, objective feedback from colleagues, employees, and even friends and family.

Fortunately, reveals organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich, self-awareness is a surprisingly developable skill. Drawing on her research with thousands of people around the world, hundreds of scientific studies, and 15 years of working with Fortune 500 clients, Eurich helps audiences discover the surprising myths, unseen roadblocks, and scientifically supported path to self-awareness.”

About the guest:

Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist, researcher, and New York Times best-selling author. She’s built a reputation as a fresh, modern voice in the leadership world by pairing her scientific grounding in human behavior with a pragmatic approach to business challenges. With a PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Colorado State University, Dr. Eurich has spent the last 15 years helping thousands of professionals—from Fortune 500 executives to early-stage entrepreneurs—improve their self-awareness and success.

As a writer, she’s contributed to The Guardian, TED.com, The Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, and CNBC.com and her work has been featured in Business Insider, Fortune, Forbes, The New York Times, Fast Company, and New York Magazine, as well as several peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Eurich’s first book, Bankable Leadership, debuted on the New York Times bestseller list in 2013, and has since become a popular resource for managers and executives who want to make their employees happy and produce bottom-line results for their business. Her second book, Insight, delves into the connection between our self-awareness – what she calls the meta-skill of the twenty-first century – and our performance and success, both in life and the workplace.

Dr. Eurich has been named one of Denver Business Journal‘s “40 Under 40,” a “Top 100 Thought Leader” by Trust Across America, and a “Leader to Watch” by the American Management Association alongside the likes of Patrick Lencioni, Ram Charan, and Chip Heath. Her 2014 TEDxMileHigh talk has been viewed more than one million times on YouTube.

In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, cycling, historical biographies, and is an unapologetic theater nerd. She lives in her hometown of Denver, Colorado with her husband and their rambunctious dogs.

Building a Happy Start-Up

When many of us hear the words startup we think of the lone genius working in her garage with some breakthrough idea that is going to turn into a huge business that they can then “exit”, then go sit on the beach for the rest of their lives.

My guest and his co-founder have taken a different approach. Through their business The Happy Startup School they have built a strong community of changemakers that value happiness over profits. In our conversation, we talk about what The Happy Startup School does, their origin and why they do what they do.

Some of the key ideas discussed

Community and connection

The power of a like-minded group

How making space creates breakthroughs

About the Alptitude Event

From the Alptitude website:

It’s not a retreat, nor a training camp. It’s not a vacation, nor an unconference. It’s all of those things, yet none of them.

Think of it as a week where you’ll have the time and space to figure out where you’re at with your life and projects, whilst having more fun than you’ve had in years. This is the future of business events – emergent, playful and transformational.

Brought to you by The Happy Startup School and Dream Valley Projects and now in its third year, Alptitude brings together 25 purpose-driven entrepreneurs and changemakers from around the world for a unique, meaningful experience in stunning natural surroundings.

The lucky few that come leave with a renewed vigour for life, a ton of game-changing ideas to implement, but most importantly a shared experience and group of new friends that will stick with them forever. Friends they never knew they needed, but now can’t live without.

Compassion-One of Our Best Business Tools.

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution (likely earlier), societies have treated business and work as something separate from our humanity and our compassion. We tend to think as if we can compartmentalize and keep various parts of our lives separate. In practice, this is not the case at all. While many of us are good at masking personal suffering in the context of our work, it’s still there, behind the scenes. It makes us less productive, less creative and possibly keeping us from finding meaning in our work and lives.

In this important episode, I talk with one of the world’s top researchers on compassion in organizations and the workplace, Monica Worline Ph.D.

During the conversation, you will learn why it’s so important and how entrepreneurs and organizations can build a more meaningful business by creating a culture of compassion.

We discuss the four keys to awakening compassion in our work.

The role of recognizing suffering as one of the keys to being compassionate.

The role of leadership in creating a culture of recognizing suffering even in tiny businesses and startups.

Pitfalls and common mistakes that leaders make when trying to awaken compassion at work.

We talk about Monica Worline’s Ph.D. new book, co-authored with researcher Jane Dutton; Awakening Compassion At Work “The quiet power that elevates people and organizations”

About the book

Caring Is a Competitive Advantage

Suffering in the workplace can rob our colleagues and coworkers of humanity, dignity, and motivation and is an unrecognized and costly drain on organizational potential. Marshaling evidence from two decades of field research, scholars and consultants Monica Worline and Jane Dutton show that alleviating such suffering confers measurable competitive advantages in areas like innovation, collaboration, service quality, and talent attraction and retention. They outline four steps for meeting suffering with compassion and show how to build a capacity for compassion into the structures and practices of an organization—because ultimately, as they write, “Compassion is an irreplaceable dimension of excellence for any organization that wants to make the most of its human capabilities.”

Links Mentioned on this episode:

compassionlab.com — research site; downloadable papers for those who want to read the original research

About the Authors of Awakening Compassion at Work

The guest on this podcast

Monica C. Worline, Ph.D., is founder and CEO of EnlivenWork, an innovation organization that teaches businesses and others how to tap into courageous thinking, compassionate leadership, and the curiosity to bring their best work to life. She is a research scientist at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education and Executive Director of CompassionLab, the world’s leading research collaboratory focused on compassion at work. Monica holds a lectureship at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and is affiliate faculty at the Center for Positive Organizations.

Jane E. Dutton, Ph.D., is the Robert L. Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Business Administration and Psychology at the Ross School of Business. She is a co-founder of the Center for Positive Organizations, and passionate about cultivating human flourishing at work. Her research focuses on compassion, job crafting, high-quality connections, and meaning making at work.She has written over 100 articles and published 13 books (see http://webuser.bus.umich.edu/janedut/), including How to be a Positive Leader: Small Actions, Big Impact. She is a founding member of the Compassionlab—visit us and read more about our research at www.compassionlab.com.

Building Communities That Inspire Connection

In this episode, we are talking about community and connection. Consider this, most businesses rise and fall based on the strength and depth of connection they build with employees, partners, and even their customers. Many of us don’t give a lot of thought about building a structure that can create a sense of belonging within our broader community and the micro-communities that form as a result of doing business.

Building that belonging takes work and strong leadership and commitment. Listen carefully to this episode and learn some of the principles that create and maintain those connections.

Some of the ideas we touch on that make strong communities

Boundaries

Space and safety

Implicit and explicit values

Creating paths to growth

Leadership

Please listen and share your ideas and stories about communities.

Charles Vogl

An author and executive consultant, Charles Vogl uses principles drawn from more than 3000 years of community and spiritual tradition to teach others how to inspire powerful connections and produce the kind of change that lasts for generations. He works with leaders in technology, finance, media, government, and social good organizations to inspire powerful connections in critical relationships and create cultures of belonging.The Art of Community

Making a difference has always been a key part of Charles’ life. In his early 20s, he volunteered full time at a homeless shelter in Santa Ana, California, before entering the Peace Corps and relocating to northern Zambia. There, he witnessed inspirational community in the face of extreme poverty, as neighbors with very little shared with those who had even less. Charles then moved to New York City to become a PBS filmmaker, producing documentaries including 2006’s “New Year Baby,” which chronicled the lives of Cambodian genocide survivors becoming Americans. The film won numerous honors including Amnesty International’s prestigious “Movies That Matter” award. He also volunteered as a labor organizer, working to empower abused workers in the restaurant industry.

Charles received his B.S. from the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California and a Master of Divinity at Yale University. A regular guest lecturer at several Yale departments, his first book, “The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging”, was recently published by Berrett-Koehler. Building on the concept that community and belonging can be developed through time-tested ideas and rituals, the book is a guide to creating and fostering meaningful cultures of belonging that benefit individuals and humanity.

Charles lives in Oakland, California, with his wife Socheata. He includes surviving a plane crash, a spitting cobra attack, and acute malaria (all in one year) among his life-changing experiences.

How do we begin to understand another point of view so that we can create and embrace change?

Creating change is difficult. It requires us to think differently and be open to new possibilities and different views of reality. But this is not easy because we have our own beliefs that to us are 100% true and correct. Yet others have their own set of beliefs that are 100% true and correct to them. So how can we possibly create any sort of change, be it settling an argument with your spouse, convincing your team on a new direction with your company, or even selling a solution to a client?

In this episode, my guest Dave Gray and I unpack some of these questions and ideas in an hour long discussion on some interesting ways to use something called Liminal Thinking.

I would love to hear your questions and comments on this episode. Please leave a comment below.

Guest

Dave Gray is a leader and manager with a background in design. He has worked with many of the world’s largest companies, as well as mid-sized businesses, startups, executives, and individuals.

He is the founder of XPLANE, a strategic design consultancy, and co-founder of Boardthing, a collaboration platform for distributed teams.

He is the author of two books on design, change, and innovation: Gamestorming: A playbook for innovators, rule-breakers and changemakers; and The Connected Company.

His area of focus is the human side of change and innovation, specifically: How can you get people to adopt new ideas? How can you win their hearts and minds? How can you get people, including yourself, to change deeply embedded habits and behaviors? How can you transform a business strategy from a good idea to a living fact in the real world?

Are you building a people-centered business?

Ask any business owner or CEO, Who the most important people in their business are, and most will say “the customer is of course.”

But what if we refocus that lens and make our employees and colleagues most important? What happens when we create a business that gives meaning to our employees? How will they interact differently with customers and how does that affect the bottom line?

Listen in to this episode where I talk with Jeb Banner the CEO of Small Box creative agency.

Jeb Banner CEO, Co-Founder of Small Box

Jeb was born in Chicago but moved to South Bend, Indiana when he was 6. Childhood was spent fidgeting at school, raising tadpoles in pools while building go-karts and tree forts in the rain.

Growing up it seemed that starting a business was the furthest thing from Jeb’s mind. After graduating with an English degree from IU in 1996, Jeb moved to Chicago to live in a ballroom with some friends, work odd jobs and play music. This lost weekend turned into a two-year stretch that brought Jeb to Indianapolis in 1998.

Finally the business bug bit. In 1999, Jeb discovered eBay. A few months and a large record collection later and StuffE was launched. It should be noted that said record collection also inaugurated Jeb’s record collecting habit which he has yet to kick. His vinyl collection clocks in around 3000 albums. After building StuffE into a mildly successful eBay consignment business he partnered with Dan Ripley to launch Antique Helper, an online auction house that married Dan’s knowledge and network with Jeb’s online auction systems.

In the meantime, Jeb and fellow Antique Helper employee Joe Downey collaborated on building Musical Family Tree, an online archive of Indiana music, which was founded in January of 2004. By the end of 2005, Antique Helper had grown into a successful business with $3 million in annual sales, but Jeb decided it was time to move on. Antiques were fun but the internet was calling.

In 2006 Jeb and Joe founded SmallBox, landing NUVO Newsweekly as their first client. As the company grew it moved beyond websites to become a fully integrated web marketing company. In early 2012, Jeb began to lead the company towards deeper consulting engagements, working with clients on organizational health issues. 2016 has seen a transition to what the SmallBox team calls 3.0. In essence, a quest to turn work into play and help clients do the same. Learn about this new direction here.

Jeb is very happily married to the amazing Jenny Banner and they have three strong, smart and bold girls. They live about 4 miles north of Broad Ripple with 2 cats, 1 dog, and 1 tiki bar.

SmallBox is a creative agency focused on helping clients find opportunities, solve big, fuzzy challenges, and build meaningful employee, brand and service experiences. We take a people-centered approach to designing solutions with you. Our services, from branding to strategic consulting to employee engagement, all speak to one goal: partnering with people to create distinctive and meaningful experiences. We thrive on curiosity, courage, collaboration and persistence, and these core values drive everything we do.

Are you living your purpose through your business?

It sounds so cliche, (What is your purpose?) yet it is one of the most important things to think about in your business. If you
can get crystal clear on your purpose then you have a much lower risk of getting burned out in your business and you will add much more value to your customers, employees and colleagues. In this episode , my guest is Craig Filek creator of a process called Purpose Mapping. Both of us share our stories of how we built financially successful businesses that left us feeling less than fulfilled.

We talk about the question; How can we create something that feels authentic?

Craig Filek, Creator of Purpose Mapping

Craig Filek knows success and significance are not the same things. After building a 7-figure business, he walked away from it all to focus on what matters most — raising his daughter and living his purpose. With over 20 years experience coaching and facilitating deep, transformative work, Craig developed Purpose Mapping® to bring his own life into alignment. Now, he guides High-Achieving Misfits to reclaim their authenticity and find true fulfillment by using their talents to full capacity in service to a larger mission.

Executives, entrepreneurs, investors and professionals in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe seek Craig’s support when making life-changing decisions. If you’re ready to unlock your full potential without blowing up the success you’ve already created, request an invitation to speak with Craig.

Building a business around your passion and becoming an expert.

Most entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs never start because they have the mistaken belief that they need to be an
expert in the area. In most cases, it’s not the expertise you need but rather its the interest or passion that moves the business forward.

In this episode, my guest shares his journey as an entrepreneur and how he has been able to become an expert in cycling clothing and sustainability. He started out because of a health issue that kept him from working at his normal job and now as we publish this he is launching a Kickstarter campaign to launch his new line of “coffee infused” cycling clothing.

This is a great episode and I think that entrepreneurs at any level would find some great nuggets in our conversation.

Tim Christian

A 37-year-old, a father of 3 boys under 6, airline pilot of 17yrs and founder of OORR. I live in Chatswood, a satellite CBD just 10 minutes north of Sydney, Australia. I love riding my bike and am a voracious consumer of cycling related news, and student of self-improvement. Everything I do tends to be about making this world better for my family, for others, and for future generations. Go to his site here.

Do you use your intuition in your business?

As an entrepreneur, you are in a constant state of making decisions. Which projects to pursue, which clients to work with and even if the business you are in is worthwhile. Sometimes data and advisors are helpful but often, even if data supports it we somehow know the right choice in our gut.

In this show, I talk with Author Lynn Robinson about using your intuition in your business. Listen to the story about how I went against all the data and advisors, trusting my instinct and purchased a business that turned into an amazing success.

Lynn explains the two main areas where this guide comes from.

How we can learn to listen to this “inner CEO”.

Cultivating ah-ha moments.

The role of mindfulness in developing this skill.

How fear can be a good guide.

How we can listen to our dreams to find answers.

Every entrepreneur needs to constantly hone this skill of intuition. Just like going to the gym to lift weights, learning to listen to your inner CEO takes time and effort. But the rewards can be amazing. Lynn shares a story of how she nearly won the lottery using her inner GPS.

Lynn Robinson, author, Put Your Intuition to Work.

She suggests that intuition is our “Inner GPS.” When we listen to it and act on its wisdom, it will point us in the right direction — towards success! She knows how our intuition can get us what we want and take us where we want to go. Lynn has been sought out internationally for her intuitive advice and counsel. She’s a popular and widely recognized author and motivational speaker who works with businesses and individuals as a trusted intuitive advisor, offering valuable insights into goals, decisions, and strategies. Lynn has authored seven books on intuition, which have been translated into more than a dozen languages. She has a passion for teaching people how to access their intuition and develop it for practical use in everyday life. You can find out more at LynnRobinson.com.

How can we deepen the relationships we have in business and in our lives?

In this episode, we are talking about building meaningful relationships in every aspect of our lives.

My guest and I talk about building relational intelligence. Not just personal relationships with your family and friends but also within your business.

Somehow we have been taught that it’s ok to be more guarded in business relationships. Most of us have heard someone say “but this is business”, especially when it comes to sales. Typically this is the opposite of what it really takes to have a meaningful transaction that leaves both parties a feeling of fulfillment.

I share a story where I felt like I was only looking out for my agenda and not the customers that left both parties feeling like they got the bad end of the transaction.

We pay a relational game where Robert and I try and guess what the others emotions are during our conversation.

He did really well at picking up on my feelings at that particular moment but missed one key element. What’s interesting is what happened next when I told Robert that I was a bit nervous. It opened up a whole new depth of the conversation and how we were relating.

This is incredibly powerful personal development. I truly believe that we could solve most of the world problems if each of us takes down our guard and try to connect on a deeper level with each other.

Listen to this show and send in your comments.

We mentioned the Invisiblia podcast and a show they had about deepening relationships. It is a must listen. The episode is called The New Norm and there is a powerful story about oil rig workers.

Robert MacNaughton,

Executive Director and Co-Founder of The Integral Center in Boulder Colorado, has been facilitating experiential group education and been in the trenches of Integral community development for over a decade. Robert believes that before he can save the world, he should start by cleaning up his own room. He organized the Integral Center with the vision of fostering more Integral consciousness through community practice and has trained thousands of people in relational and evolutionary leadership.